Installation Toolkit for Linux on POWER

The IBM Installation Toolkit for Linux on POWER simplifies the installation of Linux on virtualized and non-virtualized Power machines, gives you a bootable rescue DVD, and provides the software needed to fully exploit the Power platform. Learn to use the toolkit to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM System p and System i5 machines.

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As a former bluebird, I am happy to see something posted about cool stuff for Blade systems etc. But I have to wonder the percentage of folks on this site would benefit from this article. It seems the vast majority of readers here own personal computer type systems and at best are only slightly exposed to these IBM systems at work if ever. As the article has been up for a while and no one replied to it, I figure my observation may be correct.

We have some p5 at work, but all of them run AIX5. I wonder what is the percentage of all POWER system that run Linux.

These machine are quite expensive but they work extremely well. The only complain I have is the lack of good programming/scripting tools like a decent version python. We use a linux machine on vmware to fill that blank. We could have use a partition, but as the linux only do script, vmware is better than enough.

I’m about to get my hands on a few p5 systems so this article has been bookmarked for future reference.

These systems are serious bits of kit. We moved one TP system from x86 to p5 (All IBM kit with the same number of cores) changing from Windows to RHEL in the process and got over 20% more throughput from it.

As server distros go, after RHEL and SLES, Ubuntu Server would be the next logical distro to ask about. Ubuntu Server is essentially what UserLinux was supposed to be had it ever gotten off the ground. A server oriented, Debian based distro with long term (5 years) support and an official support organization.

Of course, Ubuntu does not have a POWER release, so the answer would be ‘no’, for now.

Effectively i hope OSnews will not drop this kind of articles nor the ones on alternative OSes.

We do have an OpenPower 5 machine at work (1.6 Ghz, 4 gigs ram) that is driven via an IBM xserie running HMC and i wonder if this is a replacement. Our HMC is old, and we are standed with no install disks nor license.

I have tried to read this toolkit user guide and have failed to understand if this will partition and allocate LPAR’s on the system or simply roll the install for Power arch.

We do have an OpenPower 5 machine at work (1.6 Ghz, 4 gigs ram) that is driven via an IBM xserie running HMC and i wonder if this is a replacement. Our HMC is old, and we are standed with no install disks nor license.

It doesn’t look like it. This starts from where you have an LPAR set up and want to install Linux on it. You’d still need an HMC to HMC-type things.

And, I’ll add my voice to this being useful content. I have a P5-550, a P5-595 (small config), and shiny-new P6-570 in the next room.